Generally, aircraft contain one or more onboard communication networks provided to enable communications between onboard equipment, such as onboard computers. In order to meet the regulatory requirements regarding certification of aircraft, an onboard communication network must be deterministic, i.e. it must provide for a transmission of information from an item of transmitting equipment subscribed to this communication network to one or more items of receiving equipment subscribed to this communication network, with a transmission duration of less than a predetermined duration and a guarantee of no loss of information through the network. The standard ARINC 664 part 7 defines a deterministic onboard avionics communication network, based on a full-duplex Ethernet technology. Such a network can for example be an AFDX® communication network. In a network compliant with the standard ARINC 664 part 7, each item of equipment is connected to a switch of the network and communications between the various items of equipment follow virtual links that are predefined during the definition and configuration of the network. A virtual link is defined between an item of transmitting equipment and one or more items of receiving equipment, via one or more switches of the network. Each virtual link follows a determined path in the network. A bandwidth is allocated to each virtual link and the various virtual links of the network are routed such that the sum of the bandwidths allocated to the virtual links that follow a same physical link does not exceed the bandwidth supported by said physical link. This is necessary to ensure the determinism of the network. All communications between equipment are defined in advance, by the definition of virtual links, in order to enable switches to be configured: each switch contains a configuration table according to the virtual links passing through this switch. The configuration of each switch is uploaded into the latter before it is used. A switch generally includes a significant number of communication ports, for example 24 ports for some switches. However, the higher the number of communication ports of the switch, the higher the number of virtual links capable of passing through this switch and the more complex and larger the configuration table. Given the complexity of such a switch, in order to meet the requirements, in particular regarding latency time, the switch is generally implemented by means of a specific electronic circuit. A modern aircraft can contain a large number of such switches, for example 14 switches on some aircraft. It would be beneficial to reduce the mass, size and electrical consumption of each switch in order to improve the aircraft performance.